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The Social Gnome’s Hoard

Welcome to the Social Gnome’s Hoard, a collection of this week’s most interesting finds from the Social Gnome’s internet travels.

Week of May 23, 2012:

Today we’ll start with some great blogging tips that I’ve come across from blogging masterminds across the web.

Photo from ChristopherSPenn.com

In his blog post “Closing techniques are for content creators, too” Christopher S. Penn discusses methods for closing your blog post and encouraging engagement. Simply stating “Comment below” or “What are your thoughts” are not enough to get real engagement. You will see my slyly changing my tune thanks to this brilliant marketer.

Photo clipped from Copyblogger.com

Another great piece of blogging advice that I cam across this week was courtesy of Pamela Wilson’s article on Copyblogger titled “A Simple Plan for Writing One Powerful Piece of Online Content per Week.” If you’re pressed for time and can’t come up with something brilliant every day like, say, Mitch Joel, then this article offers some insight on how to come up with something worthwhile on a weekly basis. Definitely worth a read if you blog but are short on time.

Photo from PushingSocial.com

Speaking of those who are pressed for time, Stanford at Pushing Social provides a list of “Six Sinister Blog Time Wasters” to help you in streamlining your blogging process. Some of them are so delightfully simple, you’ll wonder why you weren’t doing them already. Probably because you were too busy worrying about other things on you to-do list. Worthwhile tips for bloggers of any skill level.

Hubspot delivers a blog post about the most recent change to Google’s search engine: Incorporating what it calls the Knowledge Graph. This upgrade is meant to make Google search more human-like. It will be looking at your search terms not as a string of characters, but actually in relation to what the words mean and what they are related to. It is concurrently creepy and brilliant, but should provide better results as well as better suggestions.

Image from Buzzfeed.com

On a non-business note, Buzzfeed had a great post on “35 Lifechanging ways to use everyday objects.” Some of these you’ve likely heard of before, but there were a few in here that even surprised me. Did you know that eating marshmallows can help soothe a sore throat? Could there BE a better remedy? I submit that there can NOT.

Photo from FastCompany.com

Ladies and gentlemen, there is a lot of hate out there for Google+. It is tough to be a raving proponent of it when they are articles like this. Fast Company likens Google+ engagement to a ghost town in the article by Austin Carr “New Google+ Study Revelas Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement.” Now, I love Google+. Sure, I’m not as directly connected to it as I am with Facebook and Twitter, but I really don’t understand these statistics. Maybe I just follow really active users, but let me tell you: when I have my Social Media Contacts circle selected for my feed, it’s all I can do to keep up with the stream. Videos and blog posts and articles and funny pictures galore. If there’s no engagement, I’m not seeing it. I’ve been known, on more than one occasion, to mute posts because I get tired of getting updates on all the responses. I simply think that Google+ is where all the cool kids are hanging out, and the others just don’t get it. Yeah, I said it.

Image from YouTube.com – YourFavoriteMartian

Finally, on a little more of a personal note. I would like to dedicate this video, by the hilariously sarcastic and satirical Your Favorite Martian, to some of my neighbors. Those cat-calling tools who shout at every woman that passes by their nasty apartment, begging them to “Come in and party” with them. This song and video, “Douchebag,” goes out to you. You’ve certainly earned it. (Warning, if you watch any of the other videos by Your Favorite Martian, some of them may be offensive to people. You’ve been informed.)

Have you seen the Google Doodle for today, May 23? It’s an interactive synthesizer in honor of Robert Moog’s 78th birthday. He is the inventor of the Moog synthesizer and is responsible, inadvertently, for things like techno, dub-step, and Flock of Seagulls (though I don’t think we can thank him for the accompanying hairstyles). Play with it. It’s really cool and allows you to record. Let the synthesizer geniuses go crazy! https://www.google.com/

So there you are. Another weeks’ worth of noteworthy, interesting or just funny content to keep you in the know. Did I miss anything great that you came across? Were you surprised by any of the 35 uses of everyday objects? Let me know with your comments.

Now go get your social on!

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Absolutely. These guys are some of my favorites to follow for blogging and social media advice. Their email newsletters and Twitter accounts are definitely worth checking into. Thanks for reading, sir!